


Dayenu

by forbala



Series: Jewish works [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, F/F, Gen, Jewish Character, Jewish Holidays, M/M, POV Katsuki Yuuri, Pesach | Passover, yuri and georgi and mila and yakov are jewish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 18:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14194758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forbala/pseuds/forbala
Summary: Yuuri and Viktor get invited to dinner for the first night of Passover





	Dayenu

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, strap in. This is not my best work but idfc anymore. I want to post this while it's still Passover and if I keep delaying it'll just never see the light of day. Not beta'd but I reserve the right to edit in the future lol.
> 
> Did I think pretty hard about writing a play by play of the entire evening, including texts? Yes. Did I spare you from that because probably no one but me would be interested in it? Also yes. However, it’s a mitzvah (holy act) to tell the story of Passover, so I did put a few things in ;) 
> 
> I write G-d, omitting the vowel, when referring to God. This isn’t really a requirement, but it’s something some people do, myself included. This is because in Hebrew we respectfully omit the vowels from G-d’s name and the idea is to carry that over into English nicknames and epithets as well. 
> 
> All non-English words have been put in italics. Any italicized word which has “ch” or “kh,” this sound is basically the same and is a throaty, breathy sound as in “l’chaim” or “loch ness.” Yocheved is Moses’ mother and she’s very cool. Bracha here refers to the [birkat hamazon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjbeK32dzf0&), the blessing after meals, and it’s a good time. I used _yarmulke_ (pronounced YAH-muh-kuh) here because that’s what I’m guessing most people will be familiar with, but I and most people in my community use the Hebrew word _kippah_ most often to refer to the small hat which Jewish men and sometimes women wear.

Worlds is over and Yuuri couldn’t be more relieved. As he and Viktor arrive in the hotel lobby, ready to depart for St. Petersburg with Coach Yakov and the others of Team Russia, he feels the weight of the season lifting from his shoulders and the lightness of vacation spreading out before him. Holding Viktor’s hand in one and pulling his suitcase in the other, he walks over to meet Yuri, Mila, Yakov, and Lilia by the reception desk.

“Good morning,” he says with a small, polite smile. 

Yuri doesn’t look up from his phone. Lilia nods at Yuuri and, as always, ignores Viktor, who is “ungraceful and abominable,” apparently. Yakov grunts and reaches out a hand, clutched in it a heavyweight paper.

Yuuri takes it but he can’t read Cyrillic well yet so he’s lost. There’s a graphic of two tapered candles on the right side. He passes it to Viktor.

“ _Pesach_?” Viktor reads. “What is _Pesach_?”

Little Yuri does look up, then, scoffing. “Seriously? _Paskha_? The Passover dinner we talk about every year?”

“Passover? You’re Jewish?” Yuuri asks. 

To Viktor, not to him, Yuri responds, “ _Da_! Obviously!”

“Yurio! You never told me! I’m hurt,” Viktor whines, pouting. This...doesn’t make Yuri any happier.

“Never told you? Are you _kidding me_? We talk about it all the time! In front of you! For years!”

Yakov interrupts here. “Vitya, I’m inviting you to my home for the first night of _Paskha_ this year. I always have Yuri, Mila, and Georgi, because we’re all Jewish. This year, Yuratchka is bringing the Altin boy, and we’re inviting you and Katsuki.”

“Madame Lilia said we should invite Viktor this year,” Mila offers.

“No, I said we should invite Katsuki. Apparently, the other one is an extension.”

Viktor curls an arm around Yuuri’s shoulders—both to show his possession and also to silently tell Yuuri to let her comments go. Yuuri takes the advice and instead asks, “When is it?”

“Friday,” Yakov says. “Bring kosher wine.”

Yakov marches away, Lilia nods at Yuuri and follows. Little Yuri rolls his eyes as dramatically as ever and he, Mila, Yuuri, and Viktor set off. Mila leans in to say, “When he says kosher wine, he means anything but Manischewitz. If you bring that, he’ll _plotz_.”

Yuuri looks up at her in confusion. “Ah, what?”

“Don’t worry,” she winks at him, “I’ll help you.”

~

Yuuri rings the doorbell on Coach Yakov’s house at exactly six pm, cradling a bottle of nice kosher wine which Mila picked out for them. Viktor’s arm is around his waist, holding him close. Sara answers the door and lets them in.

“Hello!” she says, smiling brightly as usual. They follow her inside to an unsurprising scene: Yuri and Mila yelling at each other, Lilia seated primly on a couch beside an old man Yuuri doesn’t know, Otabek setting the table, and Georgi setting up a sideboard table with two short, tapered candles and a hammered metal wine goblet. Yuuri decides to head into the kitchen to deliver the wine and offer a hand. There, Yakov is standing at the counter with a large crock pot of soup, stirring it. The oven is on a low setting, keeping the brisket warm, and various foods are on every available surface.

“Coach Yakov, can I help you with anything?” he asks, setting the wine aside.

“Fill up water glasses for everyone and take them to the table. And tell Yura to make the Eliyahu and Miriam cups!”

It’s another fifteen or so minutes before everything seems to be made ready. Yakov gathers them around the sideboard, they all put on little _yarmulkes_ , and he says, “Before the Passover _seder_ , it’s Friday night so we’ll welcome in _Shabbat_. Mila, the candles are traditionally the women’s domain, do you want to light them for us all?”

“Yes, Yakov!” she says, stepping forward. She lights the candles, waves her hands over them, covers her eyes, and speaks in a strange language which Yuuri doesn’t recognize. He doesn’t think it’s Russian, and looks over to see Viktor looking lost too, so he thinks it must be Hebrew.

Next, Georgi says a blessing over wine and they pass around the cup, all taking a sip, and then Yuri P blesses the bread—matzah, since it’s Passover—and they all take a piece of that too.

Yuuri’s first big lesson of the night is that matzah is not very good. It’s like a dry, stale cracker.

With that finished, they sit down at the dinner table. There are books on each place setting, old and worn. The cover has strange markings—Hebrew again, he’s sure—and beneath that it reads “Passover _Haggadah_.” They go around the table and introduce themselves, and Yuuri learns that the old man is Little Yuri’s grandfather Nikolai.

They pour wine all around and bless that, as they had the cup of wine before, and the _seder_ begins.

~

It’s a long journey before they get to the meal, but interesting. They read in turns from the tattered books, eat horseradish and matzah to remember the bitterness of slavery in Egypt, eat a sweet fruit dish called _charoset_ for the bricks the slaves made—and for the sweetness of freedom. They discuss the paschal lamb, how the Hebrew people painted their doors with its blood and were passed over when G-d slew the firstborns of Egypt in the final plague. There is a stripped, roasted sheep bone on the decorative plate in the center of the table.

Mila says with a wicked gleam in her eye, “Yakov, since Yuri is the youngest, shouldn’t he do the Four Questions?”

“Shut up, hag.”

“As always, Mila,” Yakov sighs, “we will do it together. _Mah nishtana…_ ”

They eat yet more matzah and tell the story of the Exodus. Sara reads the first portion, “But then rose a Pharaoh who didn’t remember Joseph and he feared the Hebrews and enslaved them, ‘lest they rise up and join our enemies,’ he said.”

“The Pharaoh ordered,” Georgi reads, with a strong, clear voice, “all male babies thrown into the Nile, and all female babies to be kept. But the midwives Shifra and Puah feared G-d and did not harm the babies. The Jewish women, they told Pharaoh, delivered before the midwives could get there.”

Lilia reads next. “ _Yocheved_ could no longer hide her baby and sent him up the Nile. His sister Miriam followed and saw the Pharaoh’s daughter pull him from the Nile and she called him Moses. Miriam was brave and went to the princess and offered _Yocheved_ as a wet nurse, so that Moses learned his heritage and traditions.”

Later, when they talk about the ten plagues, Grandpa Plisetsky says, “We remove wine from our glass for each plague, in memory of the suffering of the Egyptians,” and they say each plague while dipping a bit of wine from their glass to their plate. There is a lot of singing. A few of the songs are repetitive enough that Yuuri can sing along with a few lines. _Dayenu_ , for example. He sings “ _dayenu_ ” in various tones probably thirty times. The _haggadah_ book translation tells Yuuri it’s a thankful prayer—”if G-d had brought us out of Egypt but not judged them, it would have been enough,” and so forth following the events of story until the Jewish people are in Israel with the Holy Temple. 

At last they have dinner, probably two hours after arriving, and it’s well worth the wait. They have matzah ball soup—chicken soup with large fluffy balls of matzah. There’s a strange dish called gefilte fish, which Yuuri eats and enjoys but is afraid to ask its ingredients. They eat a delicious brisket and many, many vegetables. For dessert, there’s a flourless chocolate cake and—by this point, Yuuri is no longer surprised—matzah drizzled in chocolate. They drink a lot of wine, both before and during the meal. It’s a delicious, hearty dinner, and Yuuri fears he may not be able to stand from the table when it’s time to leave.

“Okay, page fifty-four in the _haggadah_ ,” Yakov says, drawing the diners’ attention from the small conversations which had broken out. “Georgi, lead the _bracha_.”

Yuuri is lost again in quick-sung Hebrew, and he’s startled when Yuri and Mila beat on the table at certain points in the song.

Then they sing a few more songs before Yakov announces, “The seder has been completed according to the haggadah. Next year in Jerusalem!” They chorus the same.

~

“That was very nice,” Yuuri says to Viktor. He stretches his arms out in front of him and thinks about getting up to leave, but doesn’t. It seems he’s not alone, as no one else moves from the table, and they spend a while talking amongst themselves. 

“What did you think, Yuuri?” asks Mila, a little while later.

“I liked it. I didn’t understand a lot of things, but I liked it.”

Mila nods at him. “I’m glad you could come! It’s nice to share this. _Paskha _is kind of terrible because we can’t eat anything leavened for a week, but it’s also kind of my favorite holiday.” She shrugs and looks back to Sara with a sweet smile, somehow different than the smile she always gives Yuuri, though there’s nothing explicitly unique about it.__

__Viktor stretches out his arm over Yuuri’s shoulders and curls up too close to him, nearly pushing them both over onto the floor. “Yuuuuuuri, let’s go, I want to take you home.”_ _

__Yuuri giggles and pinches Viktor’s cheek. But before he can say anything, Madame Lilia stands and speaks to him: “Katsuki, come along. Help me clear the table.”_ _

__He stands immediately, letting Viktor fall. “Yes, Madame.” He grabs up plates around him and follows her. After that, it’s a flurry of cleaning, everyone helping out. Yuuri stands at the sink and washes dishes as they’re brought in, Yakov is bagging and boxing up food to send home with everyone, Viktor clears the placemats and napkins._ _

__Yuuri overhears Viktor ask, “Yakov, why did I not know you’re Jewish?”_ _

__“Because you didn’t listen, Vitya. We’re not subtle, but you never cared about anyone or anything but skating so you didn’t notice.”_ _

__~_ _

__They finally do make it home, but it’s almost eleven. They got to Yakov’s at six, and Yuuri was really not expecting to be there so long. Makka is happy to see them, for all of two minutes, before she headbutts the door. Viktor takes her out while Yuuri puts away their leftovers: gefilte fish, brisket, green beans, carrots, potato kugel, chocolate cake. The moment they return, Makkachin goes to her bed and is snoring instantly._ _

__“Yuuri, my love, take me to bed,” Viktor says, leaning over the island countertop. Yuuri smiles._ _

__“Come on, Vitenka. Let’s go.”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> Manischewitz (pronounced man-is-shev-itz) refers to a kosher wine that's basically liquid sugar. It's always joked about tbh but we keep using it for some reason... Plotz is a Yiddish word meaning roughly "to faint."
> 
> Watch some fun versions of [dayenu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZgDNPGZ9Sg) and [mah nishtana](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmabziV1LiY). Here's [birkat hamazon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjbeK32dzf0&) again also.
> 
> More about Pharaoh’s daughter/Moses’ foster mom [Batya/Bityah here](https://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/461820/jewish/A-Transformed-Identity.htm), she’s pretty great.
> 
> Exodus tells us that Moses had a stutter or speech disorder (“I am slow of tongue,” he spoke through his brother Aaron, etc). Legend says this is because his grandpa-Pharaoh hit him very hard when he was a toddler, fearing that Moses would one day grow up and usurp him. Much as I love (and I mean _**love**_ ) Prince of Egypt, I'm definitely upset they changed that.
> 
> Re: Mila lighting the Shabbat candles: traditionally, certain tasks and aspects of worship are designated as women’s or men’s. In Conservative and Reform movements, worship is pretty egalitarian and anyone does any aspect of service, but Orthodox movements still delineate. So traditionally, women welcome in Shabbat by lighting two or more candles and praying for the group. This is considered a privilege because Shabbat is an extremely important holiday in Judaism and it occurs every week! :)


End file.
